


grey matter

by oreoni



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Other, Soulmate AU, a blurb!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9534317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oreoni/pseuds/oreoni
Summary: ennoshita finds it interesting how he draws comfort from the ink burned into his skin, a reminder that there is at least one thing certain for him in the future.





	

**Author's Note:**

> something tiny! i don't know if i'm ever gonna do anything with this but i was messing around with it for a while  
> <333

Ennoshita is not-quite eleven years old when he’s at an open house for his sparkling new junior high school with his parents when the back of his left shoulder starts burning, like a fire flower is blossoming, burning bright on his body. The gymnasium is full of tired children and their overly anxious parents, with the vice-principals outlining the school’s goals in sharp tones.  His mother notices his grimace and takes out her handkerchief, pretending to wipe his nose as she stoops to him.

“Sit still, Chika-kun,” She whispers, patting his head gently. “Does it hurt somewhere?”

“Okaa-san, why are you whispering? It feels like my shoulder is on _fire._ ” He whines, irritable. “It really hurts and it sucks, and I don’t want to be here. Why couldn’t I have gone to the school with my other friends? Haruki-chan said his school has a pool.”

“Ah, Chika-kun,” She says, smiling at him as she rises and leads him out of the gym. “Did you say fire?”

He learns the importance of the scrawling letters that scribe themselves onto his back later when they’re at home and the worst of the pain has passed. He’s in the bathroom with his mother, poking at the chicken scratch that spell haphazardly, _TANAKA RYUUNOSUKE._ “Okaa-san, if this is the name of the person I’m supposed to love, why is it a boy’s name? Also, why is it a name? I thought your words were the first words Otou-san ever said to you.”

“Bond words come in many different forms, Chikara,” She says, and he shrinks a little into himself because she sounds displeased. “First and foremost, you should never let anybody tell you that having a boy’s name on your body is wrong. Your bond word is _your bond word,_ and it’s a part of who you are. You don’t even have to choose to accept it, but you should never be ashamed of it, okay?”

"Okay."

Throughout junior high, Ennoshita likes to sit in the bathroom and study his inked skin. It’s a calming routine, having that constant to help him through a time of uncomfortable physical change and terrifying self-discovery. He falls in love with the name, tracing out the lopsided T and R when things get especially bad.

“Ryuunosuke,” He says aloud. “I flipping _hate_  Hashira-sensei.” Silence answers him, the small mismatched lightbulb nearly flickering out and giving him a bit of a headache. It’s raining outside, and Ennoshita has always hated the rain. The moisture permeates everywhere, making his papers wrinkle and his hair frizz ridiculously in a way that forces him to steal his mother’s scented shampoo.

“Sometimes it feels like the universe is laughing at me. Is my life a joke?” He spends countless hours wallowing in his misery this way, school passing uneventfully. Time stacks up against him, dragging his feet down as he trudges to and from places, his friend’s homes, school, club activities. The world, in its monochrome and grayscale, always seems indifferent to him. Motivation is difficult, but he works diligently to keep up his grades if only to have the ability to follow his friends to whatever high school they choose. The only color and brightness in his world are the bold, fighting words on his shoulders in red. 

The graduation party that his friend's parents are hosting is a pool party, and Ennoshita's having a bit of a crisis. It's ridiculous, really, how he's never had to deal with a situation like this before, but he's always brushed it off and taken it for granted. 

The entire five hours that he's there (Ennoshita couldn't bring himself to sleepover, risking having someone spot it in his sleep or while he's changing or maybe they already know, waiting to point out that the bond words that he's so carefully hidden are male, unlike the feminine names that spread across their biceps and collarbones) he makes up stuttering, half hearted excuses as to why he's keeping his shirt on and oh, no thank you, Saito-san, I'm quite fine sunning myself on the chaise. I don't particularly feel like going for a swim, *please leave me alone*.

That night, for the first time, he looks at his mark a little ruefully. It would have been so much easier, he thinks, so much more convenient if it were a name like Tanaka Moriko or Sakura. Instantly hot guilt flushes the skin around the ink grey and he turns off the lights so he doesn't have to look at the reflection, staring out of the window at the stars. 

*Sorry, Ryū. Most nights I forget.*

That summer he spends more time at his local pool baring the bright red words to a grey crowd than he has any right to, trying to make it up to his currently-fictional soulmate and ending up with angry peeling skin for his efforts.

He also begins to have dreams.

In his dreams, the world blooms into life like water on rice paper, but it's disorientingly different from the world he sees with his eyes open. In this world, there are the endless shifting blues and whites and gentle violets of the ocean, the vibrant greens of the rice paddies that he passes everyday on the walk to school, and (his personal favorite) the effervescence of the pale newborn sky after a dream-storm, which has him unconsciously looking forward to rain where he would have hated it otherwise. 

However, the most confusing dreams, the most lovely ones where he dreads waking, are the ones when he gets flashes of light beige sweaters and a convenience store at the bottom of a hill. Sometimes he hates it, like when his bolder friends denounce their marks for girls with different names, different words, proclaiming that they have decided to be the masters of their own fate. He wishes that he wasn't so weak-willed, or that he wasn't so hopeful, that one day he might meet his Ryū out of the billions populating the Earth, but then he thinks of the exhilaration and of the melting comfort from his dreams and his resent leaves him to make way for the softest heart ache. 

He researches it, wanting to know more about the red strings of fate that bond soulmates and sear themselves as words onto skin. He learns that meeting a soulmate is inevitable, that rejection is possible, that one person may fall and the other person might continue on unaffected. Worst of all, he learns that marks can change overtime as people do, and his dreams are invaded with visions of his name, in his slanted handwriting, fading and twisting into an unrecognizable blur as the colour around it goes monochromatic. Those are the most terrible nights, where he lies awake and keeps the tears away. 

*What if the world stays grey? What if he doesn't have my name, or my words? What if my mark fades while the world's still grey?*

"Chika-kun, always remember," his mother reminds him, "Your mark is not the end of the world. Seeing colour is nice, but if it doesn't work out you can always be happy with someone else. Love doesn't only form one way, alright?"


End file.
